Brazilian Education: Exploited By Teachers Unions

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Brazil is a rising economic behemoth – one of Goldman Sachs’ BRIC nations – which will be one of the economic centers of the world by 2050.

Much of Brazil’s economic prowess today is due to the nation’s inherited natural resources – Brazil is the world’s largest exporter of beef, poultry, sugar cane and ethanol and accounts for a third of soybean exports – but Brazil’s long-term economic growth and competitiveness will be dependent on a skilled workforce, entrepreneurship, and innovative companies.

In order to achieve that Brazil will need to dramatically improve its education system. The nation’s schools as abysmal. As The Economist notes, when Brazil’s schools were entered into a OECD aptitude test back in 2000 Brazil scored the worst. Ten years later, after the test scored shocked the state into action, Brazil took the test again and while it showed significant gains in all tested subjects (reading, math and science) and instead of last Brazil came in 53rd out of 65nations. Although a measured better, the schools can now only be deemed to have gone from “disastrous to very bad.”

Brazil’s schools are still unbecoming for an ambitious rising power which aims to be a major economic engine:

Two-thirds of 15-year-olds are capable of no more than basic arithmetic. Half cannot draw inferences from what they read, or give any scientific explanation for familiar phenomena. In each of reading, mathematics and science only about one child in 100 ranks as a high-performer; in the OECD 9% do. Even private, fee-paying schools are mediocre. Their pupils come from the best-off homes, but they turn out 15-year-olds who do no better than the average child across the OECD.

Why is that? There are several reasons, but – as in America – the teachers’ union deserves an ignoble mention and a dishonorable award:

One reason the poor learn so little is that a big chunk of school spending is wasted. Since teachers retire on full pay after 25 years for women and 30 for men, up to half of schools’ budgets go on pensions. Except in places such as São Paulo state, which has started to take on the unions, teachers can be absent for 40 of the year’s 200 school-days without having their pay docked.

And many of these teachers’ are poorly schooled themselves:

Brazil compounds the problem by training teachers in neither subject matter nor teaching skills (they learn about the philosophy of education instead). Nearly half of teachers in São Paulo failed to reach state standards for a permanent contract.

So teachers’ pensions take half of the budget! And they claim they’re for the children!!!

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